Intodown reviewed
Intodown
Brave New World
(self-released)
Guitarist Michael Clark attempts to stuff instrumental progressive rock into his guitar’s gig bag, mixing all sorts of fusion, surf, alt-rock, and acid influences.
Brave New World is first and foremost a guitar album. Such a statement isn’t necessarily gleaned from the meandering, 45-minutes of solo spread across 12 tracks, but the statement made by “Elevator”‘s opening seconds. A dirty, post-Doolittle-Pixies surf lick draws the line, like a stake driven into parched soil. “Elevator” is an exciting enterprise, chewing up its eight-minute span. The band’s eponymous second track builds from a lonely moan into an elegiac swell — and this is where we lose Brave New World. Presumably Clark’s Miles Davis longing consumes him, and the rewards slow to a drip during the draining 20-minute epic “Fire.” Instead of sparking some improvisational fire, we succumb to the most lifeless bits one might associate with what irritated them about Santana in the ’70s. In its wake “Nostradamus” merely drifts (“Jazz Odyssey,” anyone?) and “The Return,” well, Intodown have precluded there won’t be much of a return to this track.
— Kevin Keegan
